I work with steel because it resists me. The material demands force, heat, precision—and in that resistance, something shifts. What begins rigid becomes fluid. What appears to be immovable, now bends.
My sculptures emerge from a process of negotiation. I heat, hammer, and entice the material until it yields, not to domination but to dialogue. The marks left behind—burn patterns, hammer strikes, the memory of pressure—become part of the form’s language. Each piece holds the trace of its own transformation.
Growing up between British, German and American cultures taught me that identity isn’t fixed; it’s something we continuously reshape in response to new terrain, language and culture. This understanding runs through my practice. I’m drawn to materials that seem unyielding precisely because transformation feels more honest when it’s hard-won. The sculptures don’t illustrate resilience, they enact it.
There’s play in this too. Steel can be surprisingly elastic, can hold tension and release. I look for moments where weight becomes lightness, where density opens into space. The work often balances on edges, cantilevers into air, or creates negative space that feels as physical as the steel itself.
What interests me is the gap between what a material is supposed to be and what it becomes. In manipulating steel—cutting, folding, suspending it in unexpected configurations—I’m exploring how we all work with what we’re given, how we find agency within constraint and boundaries.
Each sculpture is evidence of a process: the material changed, and so did I in changing it.
Andrea La Valleur-Purvis is a British-American sculptor based in Central Texas who creates bold, abstract sculptures that embody resilience and play.
La Valleur-Purvis holds a BFA in Sculpture from the College of Visual Arts (St. Paul, MN), a post-graduate certificate in Innovation and Design Thinking from Emeritus (in collaboration with MIT, Tuck and Columbia Universities), and additional certificates from IDEO and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Her work is deeply informed by her multicultural upbringing in the UK and Germany, raised by British and American parents. As an adult, she spent a year traveling the world solo in 2015, followed by five years living in Spain.
Before returning to her passion for metal sculpture, La Valleur-Purvis held creative roles with visionary tech brands for nearly two decades. In 2023, she released her first series of public art installations for the City of Waco, Texas.
She works from her studio in Waco, Texas.
Born in 1975 in Cambridge, England to a British Father and American Mother, the family moved to central Germany in 1977. By age 5, her artwork was included in an multidisciplinary exhibit at the Mathildenhöhe at Darmstadt, Germany.
While in school in Germany, La Valleur-Purvis excelled in art classes, adding photography to her skill set in her early teens. She later held two practicums with accomplished studio photographers.
At 18 she moved to the USA where she continued her artistic development, studying sculpture and visual design at the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota, from which she received her BFA in 1999.
While in college, La Valleur-Purvis was diagnosed with Hyperthyroidism, requiring a life long treatment plan. Years later, during her 5 year stay in Spain, she encountered a second diagnosis, greatly impacting her health and on-going recovery.
In 2003 she moved to Seattle and began exploring visual design as a profession, spending 20+ years working across analog and digital creative environments.
Towards the end of 2014 La Valleur-Purvis made a radical move, selling her material belongings to fulfill her dream of traveling to Australia. She spent 2015 traveling to 15 countries, making curious discoveries, new friends, difficult decisions and connected deeply to her sense of self.
A few months later in 2016, the artist relocated to Barcelona, where she spent 5 years reconnecting with European life. Towards the end of the world-wide pandemic, La Valleur-Purvis again relocated to the States, settling in Central Texas, where she launched her sculpture practice in late 2022.
